


Things We Don't Talk About

by Garonne



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garonne/pseuds/Garonne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He's afraid that one day Hathaway will have some sort of crisis of faith, and this thing between them will be the first casualty.</i>
</p><p>Lewis/Hathaway established relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Don't Talk About

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvsbitca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsbitca/gifts).



> A huge thank you to Paranoidangel and Sysann for beta-reading. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

.. .. ..

Lewis has dinner on his mind as he opens the door to his flat. It's been a long day, they missed lunch, and it was almost eight in the evening before they ran Tyler to ground in a small basement flat in Cowley.

"What do you want to eat?" he asks Hathaway, who's right on his heels, and looking as knackered as Lewis feels. They'd been planning a nice quiet Sunday together, not a murder and a siege.

Hathaway puts his keys and phone in their usual place on the sideboard. His coat has its own hook now too; his toothbrush has its place in a mug in the bathroom; his shirts hang among Lewis' in the wardrobe; Hathaway's books have colonised the table and floor on his side of the bed.

"Something quick and easy," he says, and goes to rummage in Lewis' freezer. 

After a minute he emerges with a couple of frozen tikka masalas he'd put there himself last weekend. He holds them up with a questioning look and Lewis nods.

They collapse onto the sofa while the microwave is running. Lewis closes his eyes and tries to let himself relax at last. His head is still full of the case. The body in the graveyard behind St Columbo's at six this morning. The shock of the parish priest, and his insistence that the dead man had nothing at all to do with the parish. The unexpected emergence of a witness who'd been cycling through the street behind the graveyard the night before, and who'd almost run into a man carrying a body-shaped black sack. With that, the realisation that the graveyard was just a dumping ground. The hunt through CCTV footage, and the number plate that meant they'd ended up identifying the murderer before the victim. The hunt for Tyler, and the near-siege of his house. He'd been an incompetent murderer, but an armed and dangerous man. 

Now Lewis lets his head fall back onto the back of the couch, eyes closed.

"Christ, we were lucky today," he says, because they both came out of the siege completely unscathed.

He feels Hathaway's hand on his thigh, and then Hathaway's lips on his temple.

"Straight to bed after dinner?" Hathaway says in his ear.

Lewis opens his eyes, and tilts his head to kiss Hathaway's chin, and then his mouth. Suddenly he's remembering walking into St Columbo's this morning, and finding Hathaway on his knees, on a little wooden kneeler in front of a statue in one of the side-aisles. Lewis doesn't even know what statue it was, because all his attention was focussed on Hathaway. 

Lewis couldn't see his face, just the back of his neck, his head bent over his hands. He must have heard Lewis' footsteps, for he rose to his feet, turning to face Lewis. He wore an apologetic look.

"Sorry, sir. Slacking off when I should be working, I know."

Lewis hadn't been thinking of that at all. For a moment there, he'd quite forgotten they were even on duty.

"SOCO gone already?" Hathaway asked.

Hathaway had been supposed to be nosing around the church while Lewis signed off on the body for the SOCO officers, who were almost ready to take it away to the morgue.

Now Lewis felt unsettled and off balance, without quite understanding why.

"Let's take a look around the perimeter," he suggested, suddenly wanting to get out of the church as quickly as possible.

Hathaway kisses Lewis again, bringing him back to the present.

"Or, you know, we don't even have to wait till after dinner," he murmurs. 

His face has taken on that concentrated, purposeful look it does when he's planning to get Lewis undressed as quickly as possible, and his hands are roaming over Lewis' arms and shoulders.

Lewis kisses him back, but part of him is still unsettled. He can't reconcile this affectionate creature with the man kneeling in the cool darkness this morning, head bent over his joined hands.

Sometimes he feels like he doesn't understand Hathaway at all.

Hathaway seems to catch something of his odd mood, and pulls away slightly, 

"You all right?"

The microwave dings just as Lewis nods. Hathaway grimaces and slides to his feet.

"Dinner calls."

Later that evening they're lying in bed, comfortable and drowsy, and blissfully satiated. Lewis has a warm duvet over him and an equally warm James Hathaway curled up under his arm. His mind is in that state just before sleep where it's drifting peaceably from one thought to another.

Since dinner he had forgotten all about seeing Hathaway in the church this morning, distracted as he was by the more immediate presence of Hathaway in his bedroom. Now, however, some random association of ideas makes it pop back into his head.

It brings with it one of Lewis' most persistent niggling fears: not something that he thinks about very often, but a thought that he can never quite seem to quell. It's the fear that one day Hathaway will have some sort of crisis of faith, and this thing between them will be the first casualty.

Beside him, Hathaway is snuffling into his ear, his breathing gradually slowing as he drifts off to sleep.

"You missed Mass this morning," Lewis says suddenly. He feels Hathaway tense under his arm.

They never talk about this. They don't talk about religion, or at least not about Hathaway and religion in the same sentence. Not since that evening when Hathaway leant across the kitchen table and landed a clumsy kiss on Lewis' jaw. Hathaway never brings it up and Lewis has been quite happy to leave things that way.

"Mmm," Hathaway says after a minute. "Unavoidable."

Lewis can't stop himself shifting a little, uncomfortably. He's started the conversation but now he doesn't know what else to say.

After a minute's silence Hathaway flips over suddenly, and winds up propped up on one elbow, looking down at Lewis. He's got his serious look on: the frown that turns his eyes into slits.

"What?"

Lewis says carefully, "Don't you ever -- isn't it difficult to be two different things at once?"

Hathaway's jaw twitches.

"Sometimes." His free hand is lying near Lewis'. Now he reaches out, seemingly unconsciously, until his fingers rest on Lewis' arm. "Not always. I've got you. You're my moral compass."

"Don't be ridiculous."

Hathaway shrugs.

"It's true." 

He's still watching Lewis carefully, like he's worried by Lewis' worry. Lewis feels something inside him relax.

"If you say so," he says, and now he can't help smiling.

Hathaway grins back at him. He curls up beside Lewis again and kisses him until they both start to drift off to sleep.


End file.
